1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to a communication receiver and specifically to communication receivers using mixed-signals, namely analog and digital, technology.
2. Related Art
Conventional broadband communication systems are increasingly becoming capable of receiving multiple channels simultaneously from among a set of communication channels tor a given communication service or system across the allocated spectrum.
The conventional broadband communication system may include a conventional communications receiver that may be implemented using a single heterodyne or homodyne front end module. These conventional single heterodyne or homodyne front end modules may simultaneously receive multiple channels using a wide intermediate frequency (IF) bandwidth that spans across the multiple channels. The conventional communications receiver may include multiple analog-to-digital converters (ADC) to process the output of the conventional single heterodyne or homodyne front end modules to convert the multiple channels into digital form allowing the multiple channels to be separated and demodulated individually. This approach is further described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/553,687, filed on Sep. 3, 2009, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/553,701, filed on Sep. 3, 2009, each of which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
Alternatively, the conventional communications receiver may be implemented with multiple conventional heterodyne or homodyne front end modules. In this implementation, the conventional communications receiver may include the multiple ADCs to process the output of the multiple conventional heterodyne or homodyne front end modules into digital form to separate and demodulate the multiple channels individually.
In another alternate, the conventional communications receiver may be implemented as a direct sampling receiver. In this implementation, the conventional communications receiver directly samples the multiple channels using an ADC to convert the multiple channels into digital form within the allocated bandwidth. This approach is further described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/952,168, filed on Sep. 29, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,522,901, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. Also incorporated by reference herein in their entirety, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/294,048, filed on Nov. 14, 2002, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,203,227 and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/809,893, filed Mar. 26, 2004.
Nevertheless, demodulators which follow these conventional radio frequency (RF) front end modules and ADCs continue to be designed using algorithms developed for single-channel front end modules. Thus, there is a need for an apparatus and/or a method that makes use of the availability of the multiple channels to improve performance of the communications receiver that overcomes the shortcomings described above. Further aspects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description that follows.
The present invention will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the drawings, like reference numbers generally indicate identical, functionally similar, and/or structurally similar elements. The drawing in which an element first appears is indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the reference number.